Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle Reading App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

The international bestseller that launched a movement with its powerful insight: “Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”

The Art of Loving is a rich and detailed guide to love—an achievement reached through maturity, practice, concentration, and courage. In the decades since the book’s release, its words and lessons continue to resonate. Erich Fromm, a celebrated psychoanalyst and social psychologist, clearly and sincerely encourages the development of our capacity for and understanding of love in all of its facets. He discusses the familiar yet misunderstood romantic love, the all-encompassing brotherly love, spiritual love, and many more. A challenge to traditional Western notions of love, The Art of Loving is a modern classic about taking care of ourselves through relationships with others.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Erich Fromm is both a psychologist of penetration and a writer of ability. His book is one of dignity and candor, of practicality and precision.” —Chicago Tribune

“Every line is packed with common sense, compassion, and realism.” —Fortune

From the Back Cover

A classic in its own time...The original self-help treatise that has inspired countless numbers of men and women throughout the world. Learn how love can release hidden potential and become life's most exhilarating experience. In this fresh and candid work, renowned psychoanalyst Erich Fromm guides you in developing your capacity for love in all its aspectsromantic love, love of parents for children, brotherly love, erotic love, self-love, and love of God. Read by a professional narrator, this powerful rendition of the book shows how you can alter the whole course of your life. The Art of Loving has been continuously in publication since 1956 and has sold over 6 million copies. It is considered the seminal work in developing the psychology of person growth.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

"Love," says Fromm, "is the only satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." Poets have written that, "Love conquers all," and to "surrender to it." Urging one to surrender implies resistence to Love, but why?Fromm asks, is Love an art, or is Love a pleasant sensation or feeling which to experience is a metter of chance, i.e. something one, "falls into," if one is lucky. Fromm asserts that Love is an art, and says that to truly Love, in all its forms, one must possess: Maturity; Self-Knowledge; and Courage."Object," or "faculty,": Many people pursue objects or affection, or objects to love, and correspondingly treat them as possessions. Fromm asserts that Love is the faculty or ability to Love in its different forms: brotherly love; romantic love, etc. Since Love is an art to be practiced, Fromm asserts that it can only be practiced in freedom with one another. In other words, people cannot treat others as objects or possessions to be controlled for ones own egotistical or selfish purposes. Such behavior to result in certain destruction and never to attain true Love."Love," vs. "falling in Love/Infatuation,": People speak of falling in Love, with new people they meet. Falling in Love is not necessarly Love, but infatuation, e.g., strangers meet, they break down social walls between one another, they feel close/as one. This new experience, infatuation, Fromm describes as "one of the most exhilarating and most exciting experiences in life. However, Fromm argues astutely, that this initial infatuation feeling slowly and naturally loses its miraculous character more and more with time, as the two people get more acquainted and learn more and more about eachother - flaws, character defects, etc.Read more ›

I have reread this book more than any other that I own, partly because it's short, but mostly because Fromm is such a lucid and perceptive writer. I simply cannot recommend this book highly enough. I don't agree with all of it -- his take on homosexuality, for instance, which may or may not be attributable to the day in which it was written -- and many readers may not care for the way he frames behavioral patterns in psychoanalytic terms. That said, you can read right past those stylistic elements, because his prose is positively oozing with compassion. I don't think it's overly dramatic to say that it would take me longer to convey how excellent this little book is than it would take you to read it.

In a world of fuzzy love epitomised by trashy love songs whichbrainwash young people into thinking such things as 'I can't livewithout you' and 'I love you more than life itself', this book offers an invaluable perspective on just what it is you might be feeling when you 'fall in love' with someone. Indeed, Fromm questions the whole concept of 'falling in love'. One will conclude that there is more 'falling' than there is 'love' in the whole process. He argues that we are better served by 'standing' in love. And how true. While practice makes perfect, and no book can compensate for that, Fromm's enlightenment is sure to raise an eyebrow of awareness among anyone who has ever loved or been loved. While we older, and perhaps wiser, folk may say 'yes, indeed' to Fromm's lucid and thought-provoking work, surely it's the teenage generation which needs this map of the one emotion which is perhaps most prominent in their minds. If you have ever experienced the pain of love, this book will change your attitudes towards the whole emotion, for ultimately you will conclude that where there is love,ie. the real honest variety, there is no pain and there can be no pain. Excellently written, like all Fromm's work, you will want to read it in one sitting.

Fromm does a great job of reviewing the various "types" of Love and providing the characteristics of each. His review clarifies what purpose each kind of love serves in our lives.

The book is an exceptional treatise on this most elusive topic. It's a very rational breakdown of what it is to love, what it means to each of us to love, and how it serves us (and the world) to love.

This isn't a Leo Buscalia book, but rather a very good compliment to one. This book is more an analysis of fundamental principles involved in love and loving. It's an in depth discussion, not a collection of stories. But it is very unique in a field of less thought provoking (but good feelings) books.

If you are a thinker, and still want to be a feeling person, the book can help you. For the mind, this is clarity. The book will help you get your mind out of the way so you can begin feeling - because it will teach your mind what your heart is trying to say.

This book expressed may feelings about true spirituality.Being 31,it was an eye opener to realize that in 1956,the year the book was published,our cuntry had essentialy the same socio-spiritual problems as 1999.Fromm writes about love being an action instead of a theory that requires discipline,concentration,and patience,traits that are challenging to pursue in our capitalistic culture.Furthermore,the book explains that our society is trapped by a need for instant gratification which creates long term suffering.Fromm believe's that love is the only valid remedy for our socitie's inner suffering and he expains how love is an art requiring effort and care.I very much agreed with Fromm,with his belief in mysticism transcending religions and putting love into actual practice.After reading this book,it confirmed my belief that whether we are Christian,jewish,MUslim or any "ism",there is one Creator and as the bible states"faith without works is dead".This book gave me hope that if we at least try to follow through on the principles of love,the world will be a better place because as the book expressed,we are all one human race in the Creator's eyes.I recomend this book to anyone wishing to gain knowledge into being a better person and understing our journey on Earth more.